Arrangement of levers in a signal box (calling at the Quintinshill disaster, use of collars and setting back)

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jim s-w
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Arrangement of levers in a signal box (calling at the Quintinshill disaster, use of collars and setting back)

Postby jim s-w » Fri Mar 22, 2019 7:47 pm

Hi all

I’ve drawn a bit of a blank on this but were there any rules or best practice on how the levers in a signal box were arranged? For an example would everything on an up line be together? Points signals point locks etc or were they arranged differently? Did different companies have different ideas (I’m more interested in midland practice).

If levers became redundant were they left in place and painted white?

Cheers

Jim
Last edited by jim s-w on Sun May 05, 2019 6:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby junctionmad » Fri Mar 22, 2019 8:10 pm

Practice somewhat varies by company , but in essence running signals are at the appropriate end of the box. With points , locks and ground signals in the middle

Generally running signals were arranged so that a line was cleared signal wise from levers largely grouped together

The other determining factor was to avoid “ pull throughs” , ie where two two levers reversed in the frame would have a lever between them the pull sequence ensured that lever didn’t need to be also pulled after the other two ) if you get my drift )

Spare levers were painted white and left in the frame

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby JFS » Fri Mar 22, 2019 8:23 pm

What sort of box are we talking about Jim? Something large? Or small? A junction? A terminus?

Speaking in the broadest terms, there are two basic ways of doing the job. One is to have all the running signals in centre of the frame under the block instruments, with points and ground signals spread "geographically" along the length of the frame. The other is to have the running signals at the extreme ends with points and ground signals spread geographically between. With a long frame, this latter could be a pain as just to pass a couple of trains meant walking the full length of the frame. Many companies seem to have tried both approaches from time to time!
But clearly, in very small boxes, there is not much difference between these - in a box with only running signals (a "break-section" box) they amount to the same thing!

But like most "general" approaches these were varied to suit circumstances. For example. if a box was regularly double manned, then the frame would often be split into two halves to divide the workload up. Here is an example - from the Midland - of just such an approach

Leeds Weelington Box Diagram v1_0.jpg


To see a number of other diagrams, you can do no better than John Hinson's website:-

https://signalbox.org/diagrams.php

Edit:- or even here:- https://signalbox.org/diagrams.php?sele ... ewpg=Go%21

Cheers,
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby jim s-w » Fri Mar 22, 2019 8:52 pm

Thanks both

Thinking small with a simple junction
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Mark Tatlow » Fri Mar 22, 2019 9:41 pm

Jim, i was told that the logic was that all the signals in the up direction would be at one end of the box and all the signals in the down direction at the other end. The points would be a bit more towards the middle unless they were clearly associated with either the down (so say an up layby etc).

The logic was that the signalman would set a train in a particular direction at the same time, so it was not sensible to have him zipping back and forth along the length of his frame by having the (say) outer home and starter at opposite ends of the frame.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby JFS » Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:15 pm

Three Midland examples from john's site to show the signals not "at the ends" of the frame.

https://signalbox.org/diagrams/bakewellc1960.jpg
https://signalbox.org/diagrams/bromsgrovesouthjcn1934.jpg
https://signalbox.org/diagrams/bedfordjcn1975.jpg

The Midland is a good example of a company which changed its mind about these things from time to time! (As did the L&Y, the LBSC, the LSWR, ...)

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby jim s-w » Sun Mar 24, 2019 11:34 pm

Thanks All

I actually found a video of round oak signal box on its last day. Theres a glimpse of a DE2 shunter too. What are the collars the bobby uses a couple of times?

https://www.bilibili.com/video/av5941715/

Cheers

Jim
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Alan Turner » Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:57 am

jim s-w wrote:Thanks All

What are the collars the bobby uses a couple of times?



Cheers

Jim


To stop him doing something stupid and make him think "why am I pulling this lever".

regards

Alan

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Noel » Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:25 pm

To amplify Alan's comment a little, they were used in a box without track circuits to remind the signalman that there was something in the way, e.g. a loco standing at the advanced starter. One of the fireman's jobs when carrying out Rule 55 was to ensure that a lever collar had been put in place, if available. The Hawes Junction accident of 1910 showed what could happen; the MR at the time didn't use collars, and there were no track circuits.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby JFS » Mon Mar 25, 2019 6:41 pm

Noel wrote: The Hawes Junction accident of 1910 showed what could happen; the MR at the time didn't use collars, and there were no track circuits.


Spot on - and the Caledonian failed to learn the lesson from that episode and were still not using collars in 1915 - even though they regularly shunted trains onto the wrong road for following trains to pass - as happened at Quintinshill on 22 May 2015...

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby John Palmer » Tue Mar 26, 2019 1:21 am

A bit of a deviation from the original topic, but since the Jim, the OP, has raised the question about collars I guess he won't mind a bit of thread drift.

Post mortems on the accidents at Hawes and Quintinshill reveal the extent to which what was regarded as safe practice in railway working was (and remained) in a state of flux.

Pringle, the inspecting officer who reported on the Hawes accident, noted that the Midland Railway Company had never provided lever collars because it did not regard them as “desirable adjuncts to signalling.” So far from encouraging their provision, Pringle observed that “There seems ... to be some ground for the position the Company have taken in respect to the supply of collar clips,” and he made no recommendation for their use, preferring instead to recommend the introduction of track circuiting sufficient to exempt Hawes from the operation of Rule 55.

Notwithstanding the absence of an official recommendation for lever collars in the wake of Hawes, their value seems to have been appreciated by other companies, including the Caledonian, which had enshrined in regulation its instructions for their use by April 1912, three years prior to Quintinshill. Thus failure to place a collar on his Up Home signal was one of the grounds on which part of the blame for the accident was laid at the door of Signalman Meakin.

In the light of this it's not right to castigate the Caledonian for failing to learn from Hawes a lesson that wasn't in fact promulgated in the report on the 1910 accident.

Having ridden to the defence of the Caledonian Railway as regards collaring levers, I do find it surprising that some other aspects of the working practices adopted drew no comment at Druitt's inquiry, viz. (1) the propulsion of vehicles carrying passengers through an unsignalled and unbolted facing crossover and (2) the giving of the 'train out of section' signal to Kirkpatrick for the Jellicoe empties.

I don't know how quickly the use of lever collars came to be treated as standard practice following the Hawes accident, or whether it played any part in bringing that practice about. The terms of Pringle's report do, however, support the case for saying that it added impetus to the introduction of track circuiting.

Contrast the widespread acceptance of the value of both collars and track circuiting in the first half of the twentieth century with delayed deployment of another safety device first brought into use on a main line a couple of years before Hawes, namely Automatic Train Control. With the commendable exception of the GWR, installation of ATC had become something of a dead duck in the years leading up to the Second World War, and remained so until the galvanic effect of the Harrow accident. Even then, its installation on the majority of important lines was not accomplished until 1985 – seventy-five years after the Hawes accident. Sometimes developments the Midland might have described as “desirable adjuncts to signalling” took longer to appear than we might think!

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby JFS » Tue Mar 26, 2019 9:18 am

John Palmer wrote:A bit of a deviation from the original topic, but since the Jim, the OP, has raised the question about collars I guess he won't mind a bit of thread drift.


Well, in for a penny ...

I can't disagree with anything you say there John - but notice that I was talking about the USE of callars - not their enshrinement in Regulation.
In my view, the quality of the Investigating Officers reports at the time of these accidents is something of a national disgrace. It seems that as long as there was an individual who could be blamed, that was the end to the matter.

Pringle is guilty of the counsel of perfection - even if the Midland had already had in place a massive programme of Track Circuit provision, it is highly unlikely that Hawes Junction would have reached the top of the priority list by 1911 - there were thousands of higher-risk locations. And what is so difficult about providing and using collars - it would be a poor signalman who would regard them as a hinderance rather than a potentially life-saving helper and Pringle should have been much more forceful in this regard. But at least the Midland responded to the wake-up call - the installation of Rotary Block, widespread track circuiting, and more comprehensive signalling of new layouts represented a large and very positive investment after 1911. Though it never sorted out the lack of power of its pretty-looking but utterly feeble locomotive fleet...

But I do not let the Caledonian, nor Druit, off the hook quite as lightly as yourself. Although the primary cause was the neglect of Blocking Back to Kirkpatrick, (and Druit observes that this had been carried out correctly on previous occasions) the back-up should have been the use of the collar, and Tinsley states in his evidence that it was not the practice to use collars for trains on the main line, but rather to use them only for vehicles left uncoupled in the loops. This statement goes unchallenged by anyone from the Caledonian Management, and is not questioned by Druit. Add to that the fact the fireman did not have to answer a charge for not checking the lever collar, and the fact that both Meakin and Tinsley were re-employed by the Railway on release from prison, all paints a picture for me that Tinsley was simply reflecting the accepted reality of operation on that Railway.
And therein lies my concern with these inspecting officers - laying the blame on individuals (even when as culpable as Meakin and Tinsley) avoids laying the blame where it should equally rest - with the managements who create the structures and the culture where things can go wrong.

And we have to accept another reality - much of the death and destruction at Quintinshill was mis-fortune, but these collisions-with-overlooked-trains were far too frequent an occurance - and nobody cared too much as long as it was only the occasional driver or fireman of a goods train who was killed and there was a "forgetful" signalman to blame. No matter how over-worked he was, nor how innapropriate the layout was for the traffic, nor how poor the provision of signals and other fixed equipment was ...

And exactly why were the doors of the TROOP train locked...??? Did we not trust our "brave volunteers" not to de a runner? ...

Best Wishes,

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby John Palmer » Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:02 pm

Howard, I fear I may have unintentionally come across as an earnest defender of railway company management. Actually, I am with you completely about the readiness of such managements to scapegoat their individual employees rather than looking to their own shortcomings. And it is refreshing to hear from someone who is ready to look critically at the quality of the Railway Inspectorate's output. For a particularly egregious example of why such a reappraisal may be appropriate, take a look at Pringle's disgraceful treatment of George Gourlay following the Elliott Junction accident, and contrast this with the mild rebuke administered to North British management.

I have more than a scintilla of sympathy for Meakin. To eliminate delay his employers expected him to juggle trains at Quintinshill in ways for which the installation was unsuited. As I mentioned, this location didn't have appropriate signalling arrangements for transfer of the local train from the Down Line to the Up, but the Caledonian were, apparently, quite content for such transfers to take place if it helped to expedite traffic. Likewise, rather than taking the Quintinshill signalmen to task for giving 'Train Out' to Kirkpatrick following arrival of the empty wagon train, management instead blamed them for the failure to collar the Up Home signal, the implication being that the company had no problem with the TOS signal having encouraged Kirkpatrick to offer the troop train at a time when Quintinshill could not accept it in the normal way. Was the Caledonian prepared to condone an unofficial 'warning acceptance' arrangement at Quintinshill if it helped to expedite traffic flows the layout was unfitted to bear?

Druitt takes up neither of these issues in his report, so yes, I agree with Howard completely about the readiness of inspecting officers to avoid apportionment of blame to management as well as their hapless employees.

Of course, there are also dangers in judging past actions by present standards. I sense a profound change in today's attitudes towards safety on 'heritage' railways compared to what was accepted as safe during the early days of railway preservation in the 1970s. Yet I also detect a degree of complacency about the supposed sophistication of our safety culture that leads me to wonder whether we sometimes fail to see the wood for the trees. If we last that long, what will 22nd Century historians make of a society that was content to see residential point blocks encased in flammable petroleum products, sometimes for no better reason than to make them look pretty?

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby JFS » Tue Mar 26, 2019 1:39 pm

I was sure we were in agreement! Of course, it is hard to know where the buck should stop in these things - I know that on the Southern, in very busy areas with either "Closed Block" or Sykes L&B, there was a very common slack method which, basically, avoided sending any bell signals and letting the track circuits/treadles work the block. Of course it was all pefectly safe - until something went wrong - which happened at South Croydon and Battersea Park... But the slack working continued, and a freind of mine describes how a new-to-the-Southern inspector went into one of the Wimbledon boxes in the 80's and saw it going on and immediately insisted everyone work "straight up"... the Southern Region ground to a complete halt within an hour...

Some pictures of Quntishill SB here;-

https://jandjcottrell.zenfolio.com/p729187870

... an excellent site for signalling photos.

Best wishes,

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Tony Wilkins » Tue Mar 26, 2019 6:06 pm

In an earlier post, John mentions the slowness of introducing ATC or AWS. One of the things that stuck me as odd was that the Lee valley line in the 1960s although track circuited, was not then fitted with AWS. The exGE lines electrified at the end of the 1950s were so fitted as part of that scheme and the Lea valley line had to wait for the resignalling at the end of the 1960s to be so equipped. This stretch of line was still very busy with heavy freight traffic and there were several level crossings and it was largely semaphore signals. Add to this the propensity for fog due to the nearby river and one can only wonder why it was left for so long. Incidentally one of the reasons given for not electrifying it was due the problems of track occupation.
I have one recollection of a class 15 approaching the one colour light signal at Brimsdown with an unfitted freight one foggy day at very slow speed, although the signal had been green for some while, due to the lack of advance warning. This probably held up the traffic at the level crossing for a good 5 minutes longer than would have been the case if AWS had been installed.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Jim Summers » Tue Mar 26, 2019 9:46 pm

Having written "Signalling the Caledonian Railway", naturally I have been reading these postings with interest. Hindsight is of course a wonderful thing.

Quintinshill was a modern box, but without track circuits. These were known at the time, and the company had considered them, but was very wary (the new Glasgow Central in 1908 was set up originally without them but had begun to be equipped).

On lever collars, the facts were that the Caledonian did have lever collars, at a time when many railways didn't, and their rules were clear that Meakin should have used one. Naturally when a supervisor was making his regular checks, he would never have found one not being used - it is like the police with a radar gun: no one speeds and no one gets caught.

Meakin and colleagues clearly thought that as professionals they did not need to use wimpish safeguards in normal working, but they used them when the collars were of practical value to them (i.e trains in the loop over several shifts). I am sure you can find that sort of attitude in many professions, and I am confident that railwaymen are nowadays more happy to accept any assistance they can get from the technical side.

Putting trains through the road was a perfectly common practice at the time on all railways, whether they used a lever collar or not. The pedants among us might like to explore what the rules say about passenger trains carrying out such moves without facing points being clipped. So there is no doubt that managements expected such moves to be made. Incidentally, shortly after the Quintinshill affair, the North British had a similar accident, but without the same loss of life and publicity.

Basically, Meakin was faced with a tricky situation at the end of a night shift and was on his own to find his own solution. He had a plan, and - in my view - his offence was really in not ensuring a proper handover, i.e. that the relief man fully understood the situation before taking over. Again in my view, Tinsley was not a well man that morning, for whatever reason, and was not properly concentrating. That should have been noticed, especially as Meakin remained in the box.

The congestion of traffic in the Carlisle area was great. The heavy increase in traffic, which certainly stressed its signalmen, also meant extra work and stress for its supervisors and managers. In the 10 months prior to the accident, traffic had increased by 40%, staff had left for the forces, and the fleet and infrastructure were handling away beyond what they were designed for. We have, for example, written evidence of how the administrative traffic staff at Carlisle were understaffed and not coping. So, is it any wonder that routine supervision was weaker? The eye was on a ball elsewhere.

Where I would criticise the Caledonian management is in the area of traffic control. Other railways were finding the benefits of Control Offices at that time, but the Caledonian continued to handle traffic in the traditional way, even the wartime increase. It is significant that - after Quintinshill - the company did set up a control office at Carlisle and had a kind of central Control Office in Glasgow. Mind you, there plenty professionals who wanted to leave it all to the man on the ground, but it seems to me that, had there been some form of traffic control office, then the situation at Quintinshill a) might have been pre-empted in the first place, but if not, then b) the game plan would have been coordinated and Kirkpatrick would have been in on it.

Finally, there is a journalistic book claiming there was a conspiracy. This is not substantiated. The company looked after Meakin and Tinsley, and given the shortage of staff, it was in their interests to do so. Moreover, I have evidence of it taking an enlightened view of disciplining staff. It was not a bad employer.

Jim

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Noel » Tue Mar 26, 2019 9:50 pm

John Palmer wrote: If we last that long, what will 22nd Century historians make of a society that was content to see residential point blocks encased in flammable petroleum products, sometimes for no better reason than to make them look pretty?


It will be interesting to see what the enquiry makes of this case. Much more likely, to my mind, is that nobody concerned properly understood the risks involved or knew what questions to ask. The more complex a situation is, the more difficult it is for any one person to collate all the relevant data and, if they do somehow, the more difficult it is to find someone who can deal with the problem.

John Palmer wrote: For a particularly egregious example of why such a reappraisal may be appropriate, take a look at Pringle's disgraceful treatment of George Gourlay following the Elliott Junction accident, and contrast this with the mild rebuke administered to North British management.


Gourlay was apparently formally warned to be careful at least twice, but still drove into the train in front at a speed [estimated at 30mph] that wrecked it, in a blizzard. He had also taken alcohol, with unknown effects on his judgement. That he was let down by an inadequate organisation may well be true, but even so his actions cannot be justified or excused, either then or now, I suggest.

There is also an element of subconsciously applying current technology and social attitudes to the past, I think. The Victorian ethos of personal responsibility and deference to authority was still very much present in 1906, I would argue, and did not start to alter significantly until the reaction to the deaths of WW1 and the growth of Trade Union effectiveness in the early 1920s. So far as the organisation is concerned, the block was out of order, which implies that the telegraph probably was as well. Communication would then have reverted to men on foot, or just possibly on horseback, travelling significant distances in a severe blizzard, looking for people who were probably not where they were expected to be. Ironically, the most effective method of communication between colleagues would probably have been by using the train...

JFS wrote:... nor how innapropriate the layout was for the traffic, nor how poor the provision of signals and other fixed equipment was


So far as Quintinshill is concerned, the year was 1915, and traffic was much heavier than it had been, not least because of the Jellicoe specials, and finance, materials and manpower to make alterations would have been in very short supply, whilst the pressure from the government to keep traffic moving would also have been considerable. Rebuilding the layout would have been impossible at the time, I think, both there and at many other locations struggling to cope with the great increase in traffic. I am not familiar with all of the various accounts of the accident, nor have I read Col. Druitt's report, but this is the first time I have come across the suggestion that the troop train doors were locked?
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby JFS » Wed Mar 27, 2019 8:48 am

Noel wrote:
JFS wrote:... nor how innapropriate the layout was for the traffic, nor how poor the provision of signals and other fixed equipment was


So far as Quintinshill is concerned, the year was 1915, and traffic was much heavier than it had been, not least because of the Jellicoe specials, and finance, materials and manpower to make alterations would have been in very short supply, whilst the pressure from the government to keep traffic moving would also have been considerable. Rebuilding the layout would have been impossible at the time, I think, both there and at many other locations struggling to cope with the great increase in traffic. I am not familiar with all of the various accounts of the accident, nor have I read Col. Druitt's report, but this is the first time I have come across the suggestion that the troop train doors were locked?


Rolt mentions locked doors in "Red for Danger". I would have to dig my copy out to give you the direct quote, but from memory he says it was a commonly held belief - which is not the same as saying it was fact: facts being difficult to establish when the Military are involved. Locking of doors was a common thing in former times and today of course it is universal - if fire breaks out in a Pendolino, everyone has to squeeze through one tiny escape window per vehicle. Luckily, they are not made of timber nor gas-lit!

Regarding the provision of fixed equipment, I was really talking more generally - "management" being happy to accept increased receipts from increased traffic flows without making concomitant investment. They were also perfectly capable of writing restrictive Rule Books then turning a blind eye to non-compliance providing the trains kept moving - until things went wrong.

[Edit - fully agree with Jim that traffic control should have been an immediate response to the needs of war]

John touched on the fact that the "Parly" was regularly reversed over an un-locked crossover and this is certainly an example of "management" condoning a breaking of the rules - yet this was a very common thing in many parts of the country: even in peacetime. The GW had it as a timetabled move at Newbury where DN&S trains were shunted (with passengers) to allow West of England trains to pass. No doubt if anything had gone wrong, someone would have produced a piece of paper saying passengers should have been de-trained...

I would not like anyone to think that I was seeking to defend Tinsley or Meakin - except in the narrow matter of lever collars, where I am suggesting that their non-use in this situation was the accepted normal practice - despite the assertions otherwise by the Management.

Best Wishes,

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby jasp » Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:16 am

jim s-w wrote:Thanks All

I actually found a video of round oak signal box on its last day. Theres a glimpse of a DE2 shunter too. What are the collars the bobby uses a couple of times?

https://www.bilibili.com/video/av5941715/

Cheers

Jim

Interesting bit of video, notwithstanding where the box was sited.
I wonder why it was posted on such a website.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Noel » Wed Mar 27, 2019 11:53 am

JFS wrote:Rolt mentions locked doors in "Red for Danger".


I no longer have my 1966 paperback edition, but I have a 1986 paperback edition, revised by Geoffrey Kitchenside, which doesn't mention it. It does refer to survivors attempting to rescue injured comrades before the second collision, which is stated to be one minute after the first. Given that most humans take time to react to traumatic events, the timeline looks a bit tight, but it is clear that the time between the two collisions was minimal, presumably implying unlocked doors. The battalion involved is described as a TA battalion, so whether war time or pre-war enlistments, would have been volunteers.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby John Palmer » Wed Mar 27, 2019 12:56 pm

JFS wrote:[Edit - fully agree with Jim that traffic control should have been an immediate response to the needs of war]

+1. Not addressed by Druitt.
JFS wrote:They were also perfectly capable of writing restrictive Rule Books then turning a blind eye to non-compliance providing the trains kept moving - until things went wrong.

If you intimate to your employees that you will condone disregard of a rule you have made, then you had no business making that rule in the first place, be it a rule about collaring levers, propelling over unbolted facing points or whatever. Your employees will rightly conclude that the rule is there to provide a stick with which they can be beaten when things go wrong. If the system can't work if the rules are enforced then change the rules. If the rules are sensible and shouldn't be changed then change the system. In either case, don't shift to your employees your culpability for a system that can only be made to work by breaking the rules you have laid down.

For me, this goes to the heart of the point I believe Howard was making about inspecting officers' readiness to look no further than the blameworthiness of an individual.

As to Elliot Junction, I stand by my opinion of Pringle's verdict. McLellan's warning to Gourlay to “be careful” was meaningless in the degraded operating conditions that prevailed as a result of the blizzard and a CYA exercise on the part of the North British management's representative at the scene. What's more, if you are going to attach any significance to McLellan's warning then you also have to give equal weight to his positive assertion that Gourlay was 'absolutely sober'. In the teeth of this evidence Pringle was nonetheless content to conclude that Gourlay's conduct had been affected by drink, unlike the Procurator Fiscal who, in Harry Knox's words, “very wisely chose not to introduce the consumption of alcohol into the charge.”

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby BorderCounties » Wed Mar 27, 2019 3:26 pm

For an up to date (2013) take on the Quintinshill disaster, try and have a read of "The Quintinshill Conspiracy" by Jack Richards and Adrian Searle (ISBN 978 1 78159 099 7). I picked up a copy in a second-hand book shop for a fiver.

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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby jasp » Wed Mar 27, 2019 8:47 pm

I believe the above is the publication to which Mr Summers refers.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby Captain Kernow » Tue Apr 30, 2019 7:03 pm

jim s-w wrote:I actually found a video of round oak signal box on its last day.

What are the collars the bobby uses a couple of times?


Round Oak box appears to be a GW box, Jim. The reminder collars are typical GW or BR (W) ones, still used in any ex-GW box currently operational.

Most instances of use these days would be during degraded working, when the normal safeguards of the signalling system and interlocking are suspended, either due to signalling failure (or planned disconnection), in connection with engineering works or perhaps due to Single Line Working being implemented around a failed train.

Another common type of reminder appliance, in GW or BR(W) boxes, anyway, is the flap on the block instrument, which could be opened to prevent the commutator being turned, if the signalman was not in a position to give 'Line Clear' to the box in rear.
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Re: Arrangement of levers in a signal box

Postby jim s-w » Wed May 01, 2019 7:34 am

Captain Kernow wrote:Round Oak box appears to be a GW box, Jim. The reminder collars are typical GW or BR (W) ones, still used in any ex-GW box currently operational.

Most instances of use these days would be during degraded working, when the normal safeguards of the signalling system and interlocking are suspended, either due to signalling failure (or planned disconnection), in connection with engineering works or perhaps due to Single Line Working being implemented around a failed train.

Another common type of reminder appliance, in GW or BR(W) boxes, anyway, is the flap on the block instrument, which could be opened to prevent the commutator being turned, if the signalman was not in a position to give 'Line Clear' to the box in rear.


I know it is. But Brettell Road (the model) is based in midland territory.

Jim
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!


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